In a wireless communication network, a service area includes a plurality of Base Stations (BSs), which can use a predefined channel. Each BS has a cell (coverage area) in which it serves the Mobile Stations (MSs) associated with it. In order to ensure that each point in the service area is completely covered, a BS is located in such a way that its cell (coverage area) partially overlaps with cells of collocated BSs. However, due to overlapping of collocated cells, each BS cannot be operated at the predefined channel, as this will result in interference to MSs in the coverage areas of collocated BS. To provide interference-free service to MSs, collocated BSs are operated at different (orthogonal) channels. Therefore, each BS operates at only a part of the predefined channel. The part of the predefined channel that a BS operates on is called the native channel of the BS. This could result in under-utilization of the complete predefined channel for a service area which a BS can support.
In order to improve utilization of the predefined channel in the service area, a BS may re-use channels allotted to collocated BSs in addition to its native channel. However, this may lead to interference in the coverage areas of the collocated BSs, to which the channels that are re-used correspond to.
There is therefore a need for a method to minimize interference for spectrum re-use in a wireless communication network.
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